Existential Togetherness: Toward a Common Black Religious Heritage

Introduction

African American religious experience and particularly the experience of existential togetherness is ripe for phenomenological analysis, for while that experience is multifaceted it has not yet been explored or interpreted in sufficient depth. The word phenomenon derives from the Greek phaenesthai, to appear or emerge.² Reflection on phenomena as they are experienced leads toward an unbiased presentation of truth, in this case the truth of African American religious experience. Pure phenomenology, as developed in the mind and practice of Edmund Husserl,³ examines various strata of experience until one reaches something rock bottom and fundamental.⁴ The goal of his philosophical notion of essential description is to elucidate essences of a given phenomenon. These individual essences, or subworlds,⁵ are located in what Husserl defined as The Lebenswelt⁶ (Everyday Life-World), in our case, the Everyday Life-World of African Americans.Maurice Merleau-Ponty in Phenomenology of Perception⁷ understands the experience of freedom to entail this Lebenswelt, in which existential reflection is of the utmost concern. One cannot truly loathe or detest an experience until such an experience is known as it is experienced in anonymous flux. This location of consciousness provides a means by which the individual understands the human condition in a multi-varied context. For instance, the enslaved had the burden of ascertaining the meaning of being enslaved as well as interpreting how such an experience was to coincide with the existence of the slave owner. The merging of these two realities determined how freedom was to be interpreted existentially. Existential phenomenology, then, deviates from pure phenomenology by uniting an extreme subjectivism with equally extreme objectivism by means of a reflective analysis of our everyday experience-in-the-world.⁸ The whole is interpreted by its parts; devoid of presupposition, existential phenomenology observes the personal construction of reality within the Everyday-Life World, but it rejects the Husserlian ideal of objective evaluation in getting back in a pure sense to the things themselves. Yet being able to understand truth in one realm invariably increases the probability of understanding truth in the other, thereby creating an experience in which consciousness is observable in its fullest capacity.

How then to understand the African American religious experience? Many before me have tried. In Honoring the Ancestors, Donald Matthews structured his methodological approach to capture its essence. He sought to understand what the black religious community already knows yet is constrained from affirming.⁹ He took as an example of such constraint Benjamin E. Mays’s The Negro’s God as Reflected in His Literature, which, he said, was dualistic, and a nondialectical interpretation—meaning that Mays located the African American fight for social equity within a westernized interpretation of Christian orthodoxy. Rather than expand his method to include historical consideration for African influence, Mays chose a mode of discourse which itself reflects a Western bias that favors literate over narrative means of expression. This method of analysis, noted Matthews, led black theologians to overlook the narrative-based meanings of African American Christians.¹⁰ Matthews’ dialectical examination of the slave spiritual helped us to understand more accurately the depth and functionality of this cultural phenomenon, which he said defined the essence of the black religious community. Likewise, in Dark Symbols, Obscure Signs, Riggins Earl employed a hermeneutical phenomenology to construct what he terms conversion-story language.¹¹His methodological approach was designed to understand: 1) slave masters’ biblical hermeneutic, and 2) how slaves reconstructed the teachings that resulted from the masters’ biblical hermeneutic. Yet as helpful as it was, Earl’s work did not focus on phenomena that highlighted the continuity between African American slave beliefs, practices of Christianity, and their origin in the African worldview. Focusing on the historical nexus of the African American experience provides an understanding regarding how some practices provide existential meaning within their Everyday Life-World.

In analyzing African funeral practices, for instance, Sterling Stuckey posits that circular lines are formed as clockwise movements when linked to women, but are counter-clockwise motion sequences when employed for men.¹² This historical correlation of culture is a representation of existential themes, which Stuckey also defines as togetherness and containment.¹³ The physical movement, says Stuckey, is the result of an African psychic norm that provides communal structure and cultural meaning to their civilization. Leonard E. Barrett posits that it is important to note the homogeneity of the Blacks who came to the New World (despite their differences) in order to understand how they were able to interact effectively in their environment. Much has been made of their differences, but very little has been said of their similarity.¹⁴

To bridge this gap in African American religious studies, we need a broader understanding of togetherness in the lived experience of individuals with cultural connections to ingenuity, enslavement, and the African ideal of communal heritage. My existential phenomenological approach attempts to get at the essence of existential togetherness of African American lived experiences. I expand the notion of a common religious heritage by locating certain togetherness themes within the historical experience of the African American Lebenswelt (i.e., their Everyday Life-World) but beyond the slave and post-slavery literature, looking at pre-slavery contexts of African notions of community and togetherness.The interrelated realities of Everyday Life-World entails past, present, and future horizons. They are separate; yet, they are shared aspects of awareness which present a certain type of grouped consciousness. As a means of uncovering certain elements that present existence both subjectively and objectively, William Earle argues that the essence of memory is therefore located in the relationship between two acts of consciousness, one present and one past; and, descriptively, what more can be said but that I am simply aware that I was aware of something before.¹⁵ Additionally, Sterling Stuckey contends, that (lingering) memory enabled [African Americans] to go back to the sense of community in the traditional African setting and to include all Africans in their common experience of oppression in North America.¹⁶As a means of constructing a holistic perspective of the African American religious experience, this phenomenological analysis of historical memory for the African American involves examining existence within pre-slavery, slavery, and post-slavery thought.

With this in mind, my claim is twofold: First, that although those profiting from the American slave trade attempted to eradicate any and all vestiges of culture from the African enslaved psyche, slaves nevertheless maintained certain elements of their religious experiences and traditions; and because religion is experienced in every facet of African cultural expression, attempting to vanquish such expressions did not annihilate the continuation and practice of a common religious heritage as seen in existential togetherness. Indeed, enslavement actually enhanced the realization of such a phenomenon; it created the reality of existential togetherness for the enslaved African.

Second, I claim that the black church¹⁷ is birthed out of the African communal idea of existential togetherness, which included a reverence for sacred space. Being connected to tribe, clan, and land held religious meaning for the enslaved African American. For instance, the African phrase Ubuntu¹⁸ expresses the existential reality of a part being identified as a significant portion of the whole. The whole is devoid of purpose without the inclusion of unit parts. This type of religious identification is defined as a communal religious heritage. I contend, therefore, that the twenty-first century black church (i.e., community) should exhibit togetherness. It is these two notions of existential togetherness—the maintenance of both of elements of African religious practice and of a strong sense of community—that I explore in what follows.

Through this exploration, I hope to help fill the gap in current African American religious studies scholarship regarding notions of phenomenological correlation as seen in existential togetherness. By focusing on a particular phenomenon that is situated in black historical memory but has yet to appear in thematic fashion, I aim to present historical /cultural correlations between African ideals of community and the adapted version of this phenomenon expressed in the heritage of the American institution of slavery.

Four chapters present these correlations. Chapter 1 observes how scholars, both black and white, wrote about the existential question of worth for African American existence. I argue that this question was dominated by white scholars until the beginning of the twentieth century, when black scholars, such as W. E. B. Du Bois, began to publish scholarship presenting a very different notion of black worth.

Chapter 2 introduces the historical underpinnings of existential togetherness as seen as in African religious traditions. I illuminate African cosmology to understand the essence of the African experience —axiological order and cosmological structure. The existential ideal of community is a central theme within the African ethos; without it, cosmic intentionality is damaged, thus creating a context of meaninglessness. This chapter also focuses on the experience of European exploration, religious belief, notions of conquest, and African cultural negotiation. The beginning of modernity and the end of feudalism marked a turning point in which African peoples were identified as expendable commodities of labor. The structure of this European New World developed a system of high profitability. Certainly some risks were involved, but the risks were minimal in terms of the potential profits associated with the Atlantic slave trade. This chapter explores the trajectory of this European expansion, and how that expansion influenced the construction of the African American religious experience.

Chapter 3 examines the process by which African mythology informed how the slave preacher appropriated myth to align with African notions of God, self, and others. It connects African priesthood, acculturated religious beliefs, and constructions of leadership within an oppressed world and notes that the slave preacher held much influence over the content of communal conversation. I suggest that symbolism was the center of understanding for the enslaved African American by raising two questions: 1) What aspect of the New World corresponded to African ways of existence? 2) How could such a translation improve the level of existence for the enslaved? It is in this particular location that existential meaning is enhanced, and a cultural phenomenon (in this case, folk preaching) becomes the language of liberation for the enslaved, which is hermeneutically illuminated via the slave preacher.

Chapter 4 examines the cultural transmission that Martin Luther King Jr. exhibited as the leader for the modern civil rights movement. I first locate rhetorical themes of existential togetherness, particularly in his last speech before being assassinated. I then analyze ways in which the heroic depiction of King aligns with the traditional heritage of the African priesthood. I conclude that the heritage of existential togetherness is located in the psyche of a descendant of the slave preaching tradition, Martin Luther King Jr.

The epilogue examines the construction of the black racial class and stratified privilege. Although oppressed from systemic spaces of racism, some African Americans used their privilege to promote systemic spaces of inequality rather than annihilate them. This section also outlines the development of black discontinuity, and how the continuation of black privilege, not white privilege alone, has hindered the furtherance and wellbeing of the African American community.

2. Moustakas, Phenomenological Research Methods, 26.

3. Brockelman, Existential Phenomenology, 27.

4. Ibid., 30.

5. Jung, ed., Existential, xx.

6. Ibid., xix.

7. Merleau-Ponty, Freedom, 233.

8. Brockelman, Existential Phenomenology, 52.

9. Matthews, Honoring the Ancestors, viii.

10. Ibid., 11.

11. Earl, Dark Symbols, Obscure Signs, 3.

12. Stuckey, Slave Culture, 13.

13. Ibid.

14. Barrett, Soul-Force, 14.

15. Earle, The Autobiographical Consciousness, 142–74.

16. Stuckey, Slave Culture, 1.

17. I define the Black Church within the context of theorizing the notion of existential togetherness. The black church is not a monolithic phenomenon. It has many variations and complexities. It is, however, an extension of slave religion, which birthed a sense of community within oppressed African Americans in the diaspora. Whether an African American is Baptist, Methodist, Catholic, Presbyterian, Holiness, Agnostic, or Atheist, the fact remains that there is an unbroken bond that was created the moment the first shackles were placed on the body of the African. It is this heritage that I speak of when referring to the Black Church.

18. See Battle, Reconciliation, 35–53 and Lee, We Will Get to the Promised Land, 26–31.

1

A Question of Existential Worth

What does it mean to be black, religious, and American in the twenty-first century United States?¹ Blackness lends itself to various cultural/historical misrepresentations, so it is particularly important to examine the African American experience through a variety of disciplines.

The field of history, for instance, provides a framework from which to analyze factors that have defined black existence through various moments within historical time. Psychological scholarship furthers understanding of how the process of enslavement created a shift within the African psyche. Carter G. Woodson contends that any analysis of the African American experience must entail a process of integration consisting primarily of an historio-psycho approach.² The arena of religious studies is also important as religious belief is at the very core of what it means to exist as African. Anthropology and sociology illuminate the degree to which African Americans exist within highly defined social constructs. Such interdisciplinary methods of thinking through the African American experience helpfully engage the many nuances of African American existence.

To be sure, even an interdisciplinary approach can at times struggle to understand how the experience of enslavement redefined religious meaning for both African and acculturated African American. Therefore, a brief overview of the ways in which both early black and white intellectuals treated the question of black worth lays the groundwork for our discussion. Though early European treatment of black worth, with its notions of white superiority, is entirely problematic, scholars nevertheless have used European cultural misrepresentations to affirm a sense of meaning and worth, which they did largely by presenting historically inaccurate accounts of the African American experience.

My intention is not to provide a historiography of African American religious experience but to offer one way to locate a particular pattern of cognitive essences among African Americans. Some of these essences, although fraught with dubious analytical reasoning, establish a base line of perception regarding race, existential meaning, and purpose for African Americans.

European Treatment of Black Worth

One of the earliest European traveler’s accounts of the African experience is Antonio Malfante’s Memoir (1447), which claims blacks are incestuous, heathen and cannibals.³ This misrepresentation of Africans for centuries heavily informed how peoples of the world would come to view the continent and its inhabitants. With such racial bias and preconceived notions regarding the other, Europeans embarked upon a religiously motivated venture to dominate the world at the expense of an enslaved African workforce, humans they considered dispensable. David Brion Davis notes that Europeans’ perception of the Negro’s cultural difference commonly served as the justification for his enslavement, reinforcing the myth that he had been rescued from heathen darkness and taken to a land of spiritual light.⁴

This so-called spiritual light led Europeans to inflict unfathomable horror upon African people for over four hundred years. Considering the moral conundrum of a religiously justified institution of slavery, Europeans busied themselves with the burdensome task of making arguments for anti-slavery and pro-slavery thought. Clergy of both factions rationalized their arguments on the basis of Christian scripture. Although the Puritans sought to eradicate the physical abuses of slavery, they did not go far enough in addressing the dysfunctional system of slavery itself. Though in 1682, William Penn in Articles of the Free Society of Traders recommended that the Negro slaves should be set free after serving a period of fourteen years,⁵ contrary to Penn’s pronouncement of amelioration the Quakers⁶ engaged in rhetorical hypocrisy, as many of them continued to own slaves. In 1701, Samuel Sewell sought to remedy such blatant contradictions associated with Quakerism. His pamphlet, "The Selling of Joseph, A Memorial, was widely distributed and influenced the progress of the early anti-slavery movement in other parts of the colonies.⁷ William Sumner Jenkins contends that John Saffin’s response to Sewell is the first written defense of slavery in American history."⁸ The debate between Sewell (anti-slavery) and Saffin (pro-slavery) fleshed out the diametrically opposed views in such a way that they could be disseminated verbatim. The published debate shows that both sides produced carefully constructed arguments.

Shortly after this, Cotton Mather’s Magnalia Christi Americana (1702) glorified English Atlantic expeditions by reiterating the fact that one main End of all these [Undertakings] was to plant the Gospel in these dark Regions of America.⁹ Mather, a Puritan slave-owner and pastor, also published The Negro Christianized (1706) as a means of informing his colleagues of their moral obligation to educate their slaves in the traditions and customs of the Christian faith. In 1710, Mather then published his Essays to Do Good, which urged slave masters and mistresses to take better care of their slaves because, argued Mather, God had created the state of slavery to redeem the heart of the pagan African. Mather’s goal of improving the institution of slavery via Christian instruction further enhanced the prevalent notion that Europeans were divine agents and that the institution of slavery was a means by which the inferior African was privileged to learn that the Christian God was the creator of their savage souls.

Oh! That the souls of our slaves were of more account with us! That we gave a better demonstration that we despise not our own souls, by doing what we can for the souls of our slaves, and not using them as if they had no souls! . . . Methinks, common principles of gratitude should incline you to study the happiness of those, by whose obsequious labors your lives are so much accommodated. Certainly, they would be the better servants to you, the more faithful, the more honest, the more industrious, and submissive servants to you, for your bringing them into the service of your common Lord.¹⁰

Yet Mather’s contention about the probable soul equity/equality of the slave was problematic for slave owners. Ironically, his interpretation of religion would be used by anti-slavery advocates to further the notion that soul identification presupposed the essence of slaves’ humanity. Conversely, the slave masters argued that the slave had no soul, and that the slave was of a different species; therefore, Christianity was useless. The debate over slaves’ participation in the sacraments, for example, was therefore rejected based on the social implications of slaves worshipping together with slave masters.

The Rev. C.C. Jones’ book The Religious Instruction of the Negroes in the United States published in 1842 reiterated Mather’s advice about soul equality and the need to instruct slaves in Christianity.¹¹ It provides us with a lens through which to observe early missionary efforts among the slaves prior to the nineteenth century.¹²

Understandably, the idea of spiritual equality prompted some blacks to embrace other expressions of equality, such as dress and European cultural respectability. Dr. Holocombie praises Andrew Bryan, a black early nineteenth-century Baptist minister and slave owner,¹³ for his uncanny negation of African heritage for that of a better acceptable European representation:

Andrew Bryan has, long ago, not only honorably obtained liberty, but a handsome estate. His fleecy and well-set locks have been bleached by eighty winters; and, dressed like a Bishop of London, he rides, moderately corpulent, in his chair, and with manly features,